


In Any Other World

by rufeepeach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: AU mini-prompts, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi-shipping, Tumblr fills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2012-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-07 04:25:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/426892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of flash fics written based on AU prompts from Tumblr. Rumbelle, Mad Swan, some Red Cricket and one or two Gold/Jefferson and others just for kicks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rumbelle

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who prompted, comment or leave me an ask to prompt a full fic based on one of these.

**Belle is a pagan priestess.**

He is summoned from his Dark Castle by a woman in white, holding an iron symbol in one hand and a knife in the other, dripping with her own blood. She is beautiful, this girl, cloaked in white silk and watching with oceanic eyes, chanting his name.

“You summoned me, dearie?”

“Yes,” she nods, sweeps a deep bow, “I am in need of assistance.”

“I like the bowing, I should encourage it in others.” he remarks, “What is the matter, priestess?”

“The war ravages our lands, and we require aid.”

“Then a deal can be made,” he smiles, all rotten teeth and malice, “Come and stay in my castle, as my _servant_ , and your lands shall be spared.”

And for all her proud stares, the priestess smiles like she’s been granted a hundred years of life, and nods, “Thank you, master.”

Oh, he likes her.

 

\---

 

**He is a discharged soldier and she's his therapist.**

“I ran.” The admission has been weeks in the making, and she breathes a sigh of relief: that was the blockage holding back his recovery.

“And how did you feel? Coming home knowing that no one else would?”

“I felt like the lowest of the low, not fit to wear my uniform let alone speak to my family. I was a coward, and I will always know that.”

She looks at him, hard, and then says quietly, “You chose to come home to your wife and small child instead of fighting a war you didn’t believe in. There are different forms of bravery, Nicholas, and yes, one of them is crawling under the wire to save your platoon. Another is choosing to live for the sake of other people, sacrificing your pride for your family. I don’t see a coward: I see a devoted father.”

He cries that day for the first time since he started therapy, and that night sleeps his first dreamless night since he returned from the war.

 

\---

 

****She reminds him of her mother** **

Rumpelstiltskin watches Belle through a mirror, as she organises the library.

The girl has always loved that room; she used to sleep there, when she was a little girl, after he had taken her as his reward from Cora but before she had started to trust him again.

But now she is eighteen, and really extraordinarily beautiful, and she breaks his heart: she reminds him so much of her mother, before the dark magic tainted her soul.

 

\---

 

**They adopt a daughter  
**

Belle is unsurprised when the doctor tells her - after eighteen months of trying - that she cannot have children. Gold holds her, and for a week she cries every night, but her mother died in a difficult labor and she’d had a feeling, deep down, that this was the problem.

They adopt a daughter, and call her Tia: they love her all the more for how she is something new and special, untainted by their sorrows and gained through so much pain, the one thing in the world her parents wanted the most.

 

\---

 

**They've grown old together.**

Belle is old now, ancient, but Gold is older still. He’s creaking away at 90, his hair all grey and eyes tired, but she still crawls onto his lap on the sofa, wraps her 70-year-old frame around his old, old bones and wraps a blanket around their shoulders, his arm around her shoulders and his lips on her snowy hair.

Henry comes by to borrow a book three hours later, and finds them the pair of them, curled together on the sofa, neither one of them breathing. He swears until the day he dies that they were smiling.

 

\---

**  
**

**He finds her unconscious on the side of the road.  
**

****He wraps the poor girl in his coat and dials 911, but Gold is horrified to find that the woman isn’t even breathing properly, and doesn’t respond to his calls.

Finally, out of options, the ambulance on its way, he tries the CPR training he was given as a lad: he pumps her chest five times, and then leans down, breathes into her mouth hard and begins his compressions again, hoping to God that it isn’t too late.

The paramedics later tell him that he saved her life that day: he never learns her name, but he keeps the picture from the paper in a box somewhere, a reminder of the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

 

\---

 

**She's at drama school and he's her instructor.**

Belle broke away from Jefferson and burst into uncontrollable giggles, “I’m sorry,” she gasped, “I just… no, I can’t make out with you, sorry, not even for the sake of drama!”

“What is the problem, Miss French?” Professor Gold was at her side, frowning at her, entirely nonplussed by her hysterics, “Something the matter with Mr Hatter’s form?”

“No!” Belle stood, her humiliation being caught corpsing by her stony-faced - and utterly gorgeous - instructor enough to snap her out of it, “No, it’s just… He’s Jefferson! I can’t see past it.”

“You can’t see past the man and see the character?” He asked, slowly, “Not even for your art?”

“I’m… I’m sorry, Professor Gold… Oh!” All the breath left her as his hands came to clutch her waist, and his lips caressed hers, tongue slipping into her mouth slowly, delicately, stroking her own and causing her to moan and whimper without even thinking.

Then he stood back, and smiled smugly, “There? Not so hard, is it?”

 

\---

 

**Vampire!Gold (and Slayer!Belle)  
**

Belle was the thing that the monsters ran from, and she knew it: she was the Slayer, after all, the one girl in all the world chosen to defeat the demons that lurked in the darkness, and vampires were the worst.

Their apparent leader in Storybrooke was an utter bastard: Mr Gold, for that was all anyone knew of his name, delighted in taunting her, in fighting her with the cane he carried for no other reason, it seemed, and sparring until she was breathing hard, without ever causing any damage or allowing her to do the same.

He appeared to enjoy her flushed skin and wild hair, her heaving chest and the anger flashing in her eyes: at least if the fact that he had her pressed against a tombstone and his - admittedly supremely talented - tongue in her mouth was anything to go by. Belle found she didn't mind one bit: she’d had worse nights, and his hair was so very soft around her fingers.

 

\---

 

**Gender bent**

Beau was a handsome boy, to be sure, but Runa had seen better in her travels. He wasn’t a boy, not really, not at thirty-five years of age and with stubble on his chin, callouses on his hands, but she was centuries his senior and so everyone was a child, really, underneath the scars.

And yet, when he presented her with a rose he’d found in the gardens, when he fixed a teacup she’d broken with his craftsman’s hands, when he tore down the curtains with a rough tug of his strong arms, she couldn’t help but feel eighteen again, a girl in love.

 

\---

 

**Wolf-whistles white shirts, and tight jeans.**

Gold couldn’t stand the way they looked at her, the boys from her university.

She lived with him above his bookshop, came home any night she didn’t stay on campus, but he worried so about her, and about their future.

He worried that the students with their white shirts and jeans, their catcalls and wolf whistles and youthfully brash invitations would someday go to far, would harm his Belle and hurt her permanently.

He worried more that one day tight jeans and bright colours would be what she wanted, and he in his dark suit would be left to gather dust with the rest of the unreadable books.

 

\---

 

**She's a ballerina.**

Gold had never had much time for the ballet as more than a business venture and publicity stunt, not until now.

But the Dubrov ballet company had hired a new sensation, a girl by the name of Isabella Romanovsky, although his research had unearthed a different name: Belle French was a wonderful dancer, Australian and brunette and utterly stunning, but ballerinas did better with Russian names.

He saw every performance she gave while in New York, and imagined a life where he was brave enough to do more than just fund the company and seek out its star, press a kiss to her lovely, incredibly expressive fingertips and tell her that she was his siren, his lady in white and sugarplum pink.

 

\---

 

**Belle is about to marry/say I do to someone.**

“George Gaston,” Izzy sighed, and with one last exhalation threw away her happiness for the sake of her father, “I-“

The curse broke with a wave of golden magic, and suddenly Izzy was Belle again, and George Sir Gaston of Avonlea, and this was all so very, very wrong.

She ran from the church into the street, and kept running, running far and fast and holding her wedding dress up to keep from falling; Rumpelstiltskin was nearby, she could feel him, and it had almost been too late.

 

\---

 

**Rumple as Jareth, Belle as Sarah, _Labyrinth_**

They were in a ballroom, and Belle’s dress was spun from the finest golden silk, long and flowing and gorgeous. Rumpelstiltskin’s hands were rough and cool in hers, but they fitted like gloves and he danced marvelously, his unnatural grace a balance for her human clumsiness.

But she had to save her father, who he had stolen from her in a poorly made deal, and no amount of magic or sweeping waltzes could remove her family from her heart; she took his spinning wheel from the corner, and smashed the windows of the ballroom, the world spinning into disarray and the last thing she saw - the very last - was Rumpelstiltskin’s face, more heartbroken than any she had ever seen.

 

\---

 

 **Gold is a grandfather**.

Henry needed a safe place sometimes, especially in the weeks following his parents’ reconciliation and Regina’s defeat. As he’d put it, there were ‘weird noises’ coming from the bedroom, and Gold could empathise: he couldn’t imagine children would have enjoyed his home in the days after Belle was returned to him.

So the boy - his grandson - would show up at their door with a backpack, and Belle would make him hot chocolate with cinnamon and Gold would tell him stories of the old days, of the deals he’d made and the people he’d met, and it was wonderful: like having Bae as a boy back, as well as Bae himself

 

\---

 

**Odyssey or Aeneid-style epic!**

Belle was a proud captain of her ship, and a fair one too, especially considering the trails they’d faced on their way to this place. Regina the Witch’s ‘home cooking’; Maleficent the Dragon and her cave of bones; the Blind Sorceress and her festering pits of bubbling human blood.

But here, Belle knew she had no choice: Rumpelstiltskin could send her whole crew home to their families, and as Captain her duty was to sacrifice herself for the good of her people - after all, forever in a castle couldn’t be so bad…

 

\---

 

**She's Bae's teacher**

Bae’s teacher was a beautiful girl, Gold had always thought, slim and petite with curly dark hair and eyes like seaglass. Bae adored her; no one else had ever been able to make him focus on his maths homework like a stern word and an encouraging smile from Miss French could.

He hadn’t, however, expected parent/teacher night to end with her perched on her desk and his mouth plundering, teasing and claiming hers, although he certainly wasn’t complaining.

 

\--

 

**Breakup**

“Belle, I… I kept the cup you chipped, because I couldn’t bear for you to ever truly be gone.”

“I’m sorry, Rum, but that’s not good enough anymore: my father might never be able to walk again without a cane because of you, and even if he can, you almost killed him.”

“I thought he murdered you… I love you, I thought that would be enough.”

“Yes, well, you thought wrong.”

 

\--

 

**The Golds take their little one to Disney World.**

Mr Gold tried not to be too unnerved by the fact that his daughter was more interested in the villains than the heroes.

She told Snow White, very seriously, that she understood that the Queen had done something bad, but that forgiveness was important; she roared like a dragon at Maleficent and said she admired her headdress and Sleeping Beauty was a silly head who deserved what she got; and asked Prince Charming very seriously if he could turn back into the Beast for her, because she liked his eyes when he was a monster.

Belle smiled benignly and proudly; Gold wondered what exactly he had done to so thoroughly corrupt his little girl.

 

\---

 

**Rock Band.**

The Roses were the best band Twisted Little Imp Records had signed in a good long while - Mr Gold, who signed, could attest to that himself: not because of their music, a predictable pop/rock/country blend that, while pleasing, was not uncommon, but because of their lead singer.

Belle French would be a star, not because of her remarkable voice, but because of her strength: in the three years since they hit the big time, Belle had never taken a smoke, a drink, or accepted a single drug. The one vice that could be assigned to her was her affair with her record label’s agent, but Gold would hardly judge her for that: she had told him a year in that she was in love with him, and for the first time in his life of sleaze and shady clubs, Gold had been able to respond in kind and mean it.

 

\---

 

**Neverland**

There were many reasons why Rumpelstiltskin hated Peter Pan: the first of which being the loss of his hand, and the boy’s insistence upon calling him Captain Hook; the second was Pan’s knack for stealing children from their parents, and his cavalier attitude to the grief of parents.

Belle French - mother of Rose, Pan’s latest find and female member of his little band - was the first parent since Rum himself who had made it to Neverland, and he was much impressed with her strength, and her ability to make it so far on her own.

Rum made a deal with the woman to send her daughter home, and in return Belle spent the night onboard his ship: the crew assumed the worst, but they simply drank ale and played cards, the idea of an adult conversation - and the connection between two heartsick parents - too good to pass-up.

 

\---

 

**Capri-Suns**

Belle’s supervisor was a tough man to like, and almost everyone in the office was afraid of him. But Belle wasn’t scared of much, so when he came and sat next to her on the wall in the park at lunch, she didn’t shift away or make an excuse to leave.

It was still uncomfortable, however nice his cologne smelled, until he got out his own bag lunch and - simultaneously - they pulled out their capri-sun pouches: they laughed, shouted ‘snap!’, and the ice was forever broken.

 

\---

 

**Kindergarten.**

Rum was a naughty little boy, and everyone in the class knew it. He stole apples from the other kids’ lunches, didn’t play tag or race or anything with everyone else; and refused to talk to anyone, preferring to sit alone, playing with his rolls of string.

So Belle was very surprised when, one sunny day when she sat with Ruby and Mary to have her lunch, Rum came over with his head bowed and his feet all scuffly, and gave her a flower.

 

\---

 

**The Avengers**

Fury should have known better this time, Tony thought, really he should: really, just because Rumpelstiltskin was powerful and - unfortunately - really rather intelligent, did not mean he could be allowed to run free and loose in the labs.

But all of that, Tony could handle, especially since Steve wanted to take a holiday anyway and with the labs infested with a disagreeable imp, now was the perfect time.

What Tony couldn’t handle was coming back from said vacation and finding Rumpelstiltskin half-naked and straddling his pretty and surely insane girlfriend on the lab table, having what sounded like rather wild and passionate sex among the mess of ‘potions’ and electrical equipment.

 

\---

 

**Doctor Who**

Belle had found Rumpelstiltskin languishing in a jail cell, fortified by some very interesting stolen science, and they had had a very interesting conversation.

His skill for chemistry and harnessing universal energy - what he still stubbornly referred to as magic - was her price for freeing him from jail and allowing him on board her TARDIS.

Truly, she was glad to have found a traveling companion in another near-immortal, and together they tricked, stole, and danced their way across time and space.

 

\---

 

**Post Zombie Apocalyptic city (slightly smutty/Mature)**

Emma and Ruby were guarding the one entrance to their bunker, so that Gold and Belle could get some shuteye.

The Walkers had moved on from Storybrooke, now, having assumed that there was nothing left to ruin, and only the four of them - these last desperate and broken people - were left among the wreckage.

But Belle could not understand how anyone could sleep a moment anymore, the horrors of the past weeks too fresh behind her eyes: instead, she clung to Gold as he touched every inch of her, as he tried to bury the extent of his grief in brief moments of ecstasy, and in her soft cries of pleasure, not terror, in his ears.

 

\---

 

**1920's**

Belle was just a member of the chorus, nothing really: she only danced in the speakeasy because she had noplace else to go.

She regretted this the night they were raided, and she thought for ten unspeakable seconds that she would be caught, and thrown in jail with the rest of the trash.

But then Mr Gold, the owner, grabbed her hand and hauled her out of the secret exit, closing it behind him and hauling her to safety: she assumed it was just because she was closest, but he did seem terribly thankful that she was unharmed when they came out into the street.

 

\---

 

**Paris.**

Belle could wander the halls of the museum for hours, staring at the old and obscure paintings - so much quieter than the Louvre or the Pompadour Center - and writing stories in her head.

It was even better, though, on the days when it was quietest, and the Scottish curator walked beside her, and told her fresh stories with new and glittering English words, his cane clacking on the marble floor in time with the soft sounds of her heels.

Belle’s mind could make the paintings speak, but Mr Gold brought them to life, and drew them from their portraits to dance before her, to bow and curtsey and sing her ancient songs.

 

\---

 

**Highschool**

Belle French’s skirts were getting shorter, Gold could just tell.

He felt borderline obscene, trying to teach his senior history class, when every time he turned around his eyes were drawn to the smooth, shiny skin of her legs crossing and re-crossing, as she slipped her pen in and out of her mouth, chewing the lid absentmindedly.

He was a dirty old man, fantasizing over a young and beautiful - but ultimately innocent - student, and it made him sick to his stomach even as his heart raced, and his hands shook for the need to touch her.

 

\---

 

**Hogwarts.**

Belle was a Ravenclaw through and through: she did _not_ fail classes.

But there she was, staring at her potions notes, desperate to find some scrap of understanding in her mind to decode the scribble of her handwriting, and the seemingly meaningless words it formed.

She hadn’t been able to focus since the year started, and she was certain of the cause: Professor Gold’s voice sounded too rich and wonderful to understand the words, and the sight his long fingers wrapped around the neck of a potions bottle fuelled every one of his daydreams.

 

\---

 

**The Victorian Era.**

Lady French was often to be found perusing the shelves of a Mr Gold’s House of Antiquities, scandalously un-chaperoned, but then many reasoned that no harm could truly come to a well-mannered young woman in a shop not five minutes stroll from her home. ****

She simply told her father and the rest of polite society, when questioned, that she liked to browse personally for rare furniture for her country home, as opposed to allowing an uneducated steward such liberties.

What she told no one, not even the man in question, was that the regularity of her visits had more to do with a nigh-on inappropriate fondness and appreciation for the owner.

 

\---

 

**Titanic**

“You have to take him!” Gold shouted, his hand gripping his son’s hard for the last time through the bars holding the steerage passengers in the bowls of the sinking liner, “Get him to safety!”

Belle stared at Bae, as the boy’s hand was released from his father’s grip, and surged forwards in a moment of utter dispair and longing to clutch Gold’s face through the bars, covering his mouth with hers in a final and desperate, tearstained kiss.

“Take care of yourself, dear,” he murmured, “Promise.” She nodded; smiling bravely through the tears pouring down her already soaked face, and straightened, grabbing Bae’s hand, “Now go!”

 

\---

 

**World War II - Nurse/Military Officer**

Every soldier flirts with the nurses, especially the pretty ones, and Colonel Gold can see even with his old and jaded eyes that Nurse French is the prettiest of them all.

Other soldiers, the younger men, prefer Nurse Lucas’ scandalously short hemlines, and Nurse Blanchard’s motherly cooing and advice; but Gold can see something deeper, something brighter and altogether more interesting in Nurse French’s eyes.

It helps that while the other nurses are intimidated by his rank and his towering reputation, Nurse French kisses his forehead when he suffers, and sits at his bedside to discuss the world he has seen and she deeply craves for hours in the middle of the night: one day, he will make her his wife.

 

\---

 

**Gold is a priest.**

She comes every day to say her prayers and beg for forgiveness: Gold cannot understand at all why, for there is nothing to forgive - by all accounts, it is her boyfriend who is the one in need of salvation.

But Belle French never seems to hear him when he tells her this, and so when she comes to his church and kneels on the cold stone floor, he allows her to plead and pray without interruption, no longer questions her need for absolution.

It is a cold day in November when the quiet, sombre girl comes bursting through the doors and runs up the aisle, collapses in front of the cross and bows her head, the tears on her face fast and hot and uncontrollable.

“My dear,” he comes to stand beside her, unable to keep his mouth shut this time when one of his own - the one he fears for and loves most dearly, although he would never say - is sobbing at his altar, “What has happened?”

She looks up at him, eyes wide and wet, and inhales a slow and shuddering breath that just dissolves into more sobs. There are bruises up and down her arms, cuts riddling her skin, and before he knows it he has sunk to the floor and gathered the shaking girl in his arms.

 

\---

 

**Mr Gold trying to impress Belle on a date**

Of all the places in Manhattan where he could have brought her, he had to choose a seafood place: how was he supposed to know she was deathly allergic to shellfish?

Now, three hours later, his attempt to impress his beautiful young girlfriend a total shambles, he sits with his head in his hands by her hospital bed and watches her sleep, hoping to God that she will wake up.

“Hey,” she turns her head, smiles an exhausted smile, “You’re still here.”

“I nearly killed you, dearie,” he whispers, self-loathing evident in his tone, “Of course I stayed.”

“All night,” she murmurs, seeing the dawn breaking on the horizon through the window, “I’m impressed.”

 _Well,_ he thinks, a little sarcastically, _that’s one way to impress a girl on the first date._

 

_\---_

 

**Ancient Egypt**

She is the Pharaoh’s daughter; she can go wherever she pleases, anywhere she likes in the castle or the city.

But likely as not, as most of her attendants have come to realise, she will end up in the scribe’s workshop in the palace, knelt beside the man himself as he paints stories and decrees, day-to-day business and ancient tales of Gods and men, onto long rolls of papyrus. 

She laughs when the cat who has adopted her follows her there, and steps in the scribe’s ink, leaving black pawprints across a fresh roll of paper without a hint of shame; the just scribe watches, not known for his good temper, and everyone wonders if he will suddenly lose his mind and berate the princess of Egypt.

But his lips twitch, and he is laughing too, and he limps over to fetch new paper without a single word of anger: that is the day that the scribe falls deeply in love with the Pharaoh’s daughter.


	2. Mad Swan

_**Labyrinth** _

Jefferson just had to wish _himself_ away: anyone else would wish away the kids who were crying, or the dog yapping, or Regina who put them in this mess, but oh, no. Her husband, King of the insane decision, had wished himself away, and now she was stuck having to save him.

Emma brought her gun, and found that tricky goblin bastards - their king excepted, and what a fucking piece of perverted work that guy was - were a lot more co-operative when facing a firearm: she had him saved within half an hour, but he still slept on the couch for a week.

 

\---

 

**The Avengers**

Emma Swan had worked for SHIELD most of her adult life: SHIELD essentially WAS her life, and so she felt awful when, after spending three days near-straight working with the Avengers initiative, she would go home and down into the basement, and find her husband working on his dimension canon which - he said - was definitely not dangerous.

SHIELD would want to know, she knew, and would want it in government, not civilian hands: but Jefferson wasn’t a superhero, not like Stark and Banner, and so they would just take the research from him and burn the remains.

Emma loved SHIELD like her family, like her whole world, but Jefferson was the love of her life, and she would sooner die than see his life’s work stolen, co-opted or destroyed: Emma loved him far too much to allow her job, her choices, to break his heart.

 

\---

 

**Hogwarts**

Emma Swan was never sure how to feel about the boy she sat next to in Transfiguration class.

Jefferson was a Ravenclaw, with some of the best marks in the subject, and definitely one of Professor Vincent’s favourites: on the one hand, he was always willing to help Emma with her class work; on the other, she had a boyfriend, and for all that Jefferson had the darkest, most soulful eyes she’d ever seen and a smile that promised wicked danger, the type Gryffindors craved, he wasn’t right for her.

It didn’t stop her from catching herself waiting for Graham outside the Hufflepuff common-room, and wishing she was several floors up and a few staircases over, waiting for a crazy boy with messy fair hair and a velvet top hat.

 

\---

 

**Doctor Who**

The Hatter was entirely and completely batshit insane: Emma had decided this within moments of their meeting.

But then, within hours of that assumption, he had defeated a giant white rabbit with just a top hat and a sonic pair of scissors, and invited her to leave her life as an inner-city cop and travel time and space, and after accepting all of that, Emma was starting to wonder who between them was truly crazy.

After six months of travel, there or there abouts, she had realised something very important: he needed her to keep him fighting, to keep him from losing his mind completely, just as much as she needed his bright smiles and wide eyes to keep her laughing.

 

\---

 

**University  
**

Jefferson Hatter was weirdly intense for a guy in an intermediate arts and crafts class in a community college.

But he made very attractive hats and headbands, and Emma was down to the final minute without a present for Mary Margaret’s birthday, and okay, his eyes were very deep and sincere and pretty.

But when he’d insisted she help him make it, she hadn’t expected her to find herself at midnight, the beret lying completed on the desk, sat in Jefferson’s lap with his hands on her waist and her mouth moving frantically over his.

 

\--- ****

**The Incredibles**

Emma and Jefferson, the Saviour and the Hatter, had certain powers between them.

But with Henry and Grace, with his insight and her ability to make the whole room feel happier with just a smile, formed quite a formidable force.

There was a bank robbery in Storybrooke, and while Emma did her cop thing and Jefferson quietly transported the hostages out of there, Grace calmed everyone down and Henry assessed exactly why the robbers - the Merry Men, apparently - did as they did.


	3. Gold/Jefferson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some of these are broship, one or two are full-on slash. I think I had one anon who was very interested in this ship, and it was a fun challenge!

**University - Bright pink coffee mug with a curvy G on it**

Gold has no idea who got into his office, but there it is: evidence. A pink coffee mug with his initial on the side in swirly black, and he has his suspicions.

He’d like to think it was sweet Belle French from his second year history group, but one glance at her the following day proves otherwise: her best friend, however, is blushing scarlet and can’t meet his eyes.

Gold has fun that day, teasing the poor boy, and has to wonder: exactly how drunk must he have been to consider the mug in any way a good idea.

 

\---

 

**Hat hostage.**

Jefferson’s favourite hat was missing, and he knew exactly who stole it. He grabbed his cell phone, dialled the new number quickly and was rewarded with a groan and a grumbled, “Sleeping, fuck off.” down the other end.

“Gold, you stole my hat when you left this morning and I need it back.” He keeps the panic out of his voice: he knows this man, knows not to let the importance of such a keepsake show.

“Come and find it then,” there’s no mistaking the invitation in Gold’s tired voice, “It’s around here someplace.”

 

\---

 

**The morning after raiding the town's pub.**

“Holy shit,” Jefferson clutches his head, and reaches for his shirt, “Where the fuck are we?”

Gold coughs, tries to sit up and can’t through the massive headache. They lie on a wooden floor surrounded by bottles of rum, and he can’t feel a thing beyond his hangover, “Better yet, where the fuck are our wives?”

 

\---

 

**Wonderland.**

Rumpelstiltskin found himself in the Hall of Hats fairly quickly, and was glad to see that the infamous Hatter was mostly unharmed. If he intended to reach the other world, to find Bae, he’d need this man as a guide… but he was clearly quite insane, as much as his name suggested if not more.

“Come on, dearie,” he trilled, “Let us leave Wonderland behind.”

Hatter bowed and smiled, and yet still there was nothing in his eyes but deep and paralysing madness.

 

\---

 

**Drugged Tea**

Gold was certain that Jefferson must have drugged his tea again.

The first time, he had ended up missing the nice rolls of velvet he had acquired from an ex-tenants curtains; the second, his tea set - the one missing a cup, which thankfully remained where it belonged - lost its teapot.

But this time, he had drunk nothing since lunch, and yet he was still sat on his sofa, being very carefully and seriously kissed by the formerly-Mad Hatter… and enjoying it, his hands somehow tangled in Jefferson’s soft and springy hair, and a small moan of pleasure escaping his lips.

 

\---

 

**Girls' night out.**

Emma and Belle were girls who could be trusted to keep level heads and take care of themselves: this much their husbands knew. However, when Ruby Lucas and a lot of alcohol were added into the mix, things tended to get a little more nerve-wracking, and so it was for purely protective reasons that Jefferson and Gold followed Ruby’s convertible at a reserved distance, and waited outside the bar where they’d chosen to spend the evening, peering with binoculars through the windows.

They hadn’t known that Ruby would decide to take them to ladies’ night at a strip club; they certainly hadn’t known that their wives knew exactly what they were doing, and that they had slipped out the back and gone home before eight.


	4. Others

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are the ones that're either mixed pairings, gen, or written for pairings I didn't write enough for to fill their own section. Enjoy!

**Belle + The Shadow Man, The Princess and the Frog**

The shadows do not phase Belle: she’s seen worse.

“Oh come on,” she taps her toe, and the Shadow Man pauses, stares in shock at her rolled eyes, “Do you have the eye of newt or not, Rumpelstiltskin needs it and he sent me and I’m damned if I’ll go back without it.”

“Oh, you’ll be damned, little girl…” he rumbles, getting back into his flow and wrapping her in smoky tendrils. She clears them away with a cough and a wave of her hand.

“You’re worse than Rum when he’s in a tantrum!” She complains, “Can I just pay you, or will there be more theatrics?”

The Shadow Man refuses to deal with her ever again.

 

\---

 

**Mean Girls**

Emma and Jefferson claimed to be Belle’s friends; at least, she hoped so.

But Mary Margaret had seemed so sweet, so open and friendly and lovely, and she was definitely the prettiest girl Belle had ever seen - even if Ashley Boyd was too dumb to live, and Ruby Lucas seemed to never stop gossiping about who she’d slept with.

Belle had heard of how Mary Margaret had brought down Regina Mills the year before, and Emma wanted revenge for her girlfriend’s mental breakdown: there was nothing wrong with helping out a friend, right?

 

\---

 

**Mad Swan + Rumbelle - Why the boys are banned from the kitchen.**

They’d had a food fight, a fucking _food fight_ , and Emma is unimpressed. When she’d invited the Golds around to hers and Jefferson’s for thanksgiving, the last thing she’d expected was to leave the room to check on Belle - she’d been feeling woozy, so close to the due date, and had to lie down - and come back to find her bowl of Brussels sprouts used as projectiles and both men covered in mashed potato.

She takes over cooking duties, and Gold and Jefferson are sent to tend to Belle in disgrace.

 

\---

 

**Mad Swan + Rumbelle - Karaoke Night.**

“You are not singing Poison and Wine,” Emma admonished Gold and Belle, with a shake of her finger, “Not again.”

“Why not?” Belle protested, “I love it, it’s so perfectly… well, it used to be us, at least.”

“You’ll get Jefferson weeping again,” Emma sighed, wrapping an arm protectively around her husband’s shoulders, “And I’m not having that. Do Call Me Maybe instead.”

Emma wasn’t invited back to Karaoke Night.

 

\---

 

**Belle and Ruby - "Grown-up" pajama party.**

 “Oh, no, we are not having a pillow fight,” Belle folded her arms and shook her head, unmoveable.

“But… but they’re so much fun!” Ruby protested, throwing a cushion at her friend as an example, and frowning when it was calmly caught and put to one side.

“You don’t think Rum has magic mirrors everywhere? And Archie and Jefferson over for drinks? We’re already in skimpy nightclothes, I’m not helping him out anymore than that.”

Every man in Gold’s shop groaned, and complained for days about his girlfriend’s pragmatism.

 

\---

 

**Rumpelstiltskin/Dark Snow - Oceans Eleven/Italian Job-esque high profile heist**

“This crossbow never misses its target, dearie,” Rumpelstiltskin murmured, “Are you certain you want to be the one to repel up a building?”

She fixed him with an unimpressed glare, “Like I have anything left to lose if I fall; get out of the way and let me do this.”

It was his fault she took all the risks, his fault she was the first one into a dangerous situation and the last one out; he had stolen everything worth saving from her soul, but damn if she didn’t make a wonderful little assassin.

 

\---

 

**Rumple + Charming - Road trip**

“Oh, my God, James, are we lost again?”

“Snow, there is like, one road in all of Nebraska: we can’t be lost, we haven’t turned off in hours, right Rum?”

He was fixed with a dull and unimpressed look, “We passed the state boundary an hour ago: this is Kansas, and we should have been off the freeway yesterday.”

 

\---

 

**Rumplestiltskin/Jareth broship - Labyrinth.**

Goblin whiskey was the only thing in all the Realms that could get Rumpelstiltskin properly drunk, and Jareth guarded his supply jealously. Luckily, when Rum showed up in the Castle at the centre of the Goblin City, his head hung and body bruised the King at least could see that the man needed a drink.

They sat on the throne room floor all night, getting rapidly closer to alcohol poisoning and morosely mourning the loss of bright-eyed brunettes with brave hearts and curious, intoxicatingly intelligent minds.

 

\---

 

**Rumplestiltskin/Regina - They rule together**

It was said that the King and Queen did not get on: they had, once upon a time, when he had been the impish Dark One, and she his young apprentice.

But since she became Queen and married her old mentor for the sake of a girlhood crush, the power seemed to have corrupted her and turned him to stone.

Regina spent her days plotting, and Rumpelstiltskin turned to the bottle, the joy they had once found in each other lost: it was said that she still mourned the man she had seen in him, and he the girl who had come after her, the maid she had killed out of jealousy on the day of their wedding.

 

\---

 

**Red cricket, Hogwarts**

Professor Hopper liked to walk in the grounds, this all of Hogwarts knew: he liked the lake, with its unknowable depths and placid, calm surface; he liked the mystery of the Forbidden forest, and the fact he could look up at the castle and feel like a sorcerer of old, like Merlin at Camelot.

Of course, what all of Hogwarts, excepting the woman in question, also knew was that the view Professor Hopper enjoyed best was that of the groundskeeper’s granddaughter.

Professor Lucas, younger than all of her peers, taught Care of Magical Creatures, and watching her with her pets, nuzzling her hand and chirruping when she cooed to them and calmed them with a few soothing words, was the highlight of Archie’s day.


End file.
